The replacement for the Kia came about because of a confluence of factors: my interest in having a technically-advanced electric drive vehicle, the desire of GM to sell me said vehicle to get them out into the public, and my ability to sell the Kia without losing my shirt. This all resulted in a car that I liked very much, but events out of my control (literally) meant that it didn’t spend as long in my garage as I would have liked.

As a member of the Society of Automotive Engineers, I was able to hear directly from GM engineers at conferences about the car’s technically interesting drivetrain. I was also able to attend conferences and hear from GM’s alternative fuel leaders about their vision for the Volt as the first in a series of electric drive vehicles that would demonstrate their technical leadership. I was very interested in the car as a practical everyday driver that would be able to meet my daily commute needs with electricity (although I missed that mark by a hair, as we’ll see).

Another consideration that swayed me was the very low lease payments available – of course, GM was subsidizing the car’s lease as a way to increase demand and put the cars in the hands of buyers.

I obtained the car from a dealer that was one of the biggest sellers of Volts in the area. The salesperson assigned to sell Volts was a Volt owner himself so he was aware of the car’s special features and how to sell them. The dealer was helpful, the deal was transparent, and the car came home with me.

The car’s advertised 45 miles of all-electric range was pretty close to what I achieved in real-world mixed driving (some surface streets, some highway). As I got used to the car and how it operated, it became somewhat of a game to me to see how far I could get in the 50 mile round-trip commute between home and work before the gasoline engine kicked in. Since I knew I’d never be stranded, the game was fun and I learned quite a bit about my commute and electric vehicles.

One thing I learned about the commute was that the trip from home to my office was slightly uphill, as I used more than 50% of the battery capacity to do half the trip. I caught up on the way home as I was going downhill, and it was fairly easy to see with the car’s many displays and information flows how the two directions differed. The heavy traffic that I experienced every day was actually a benefit to me, as the car offered a fairly aggressive “one-pedal” regeneration mode that did a very good job of pushing kinetic energy back to the batteries and making the stop-go traffic creep a lot easier to deal with as I only needed to modulate the accelerator and not touch the brakes.

I was able on a couple of occasions to stretch the 45 mile all electric range to achieve a full 50 mile round trip, but that required me being alone in the car (vs. carpooling with my wife), not taking the extra half-mile to stop at her office, and having ideal weather conditions (sunny and low 60s). The fact that I couldn’t quite get a full round trip was annoying only because as an engineer it bugged me that I couldn’t quite get there consistently. During the winter the question of getting a full round trip was moot as the use of the heat shortened range more than a bit (maybe 5 miles out of 45 as I recall).

Charging it up was quite easy – I had a 240 volt charger installed in my garage, and the Volt’s software was quite intelligent and user-friendly. All I had to do was to tell the car when I wanted it to be ready to go and plug it in. The software analyzed how much charge the batteries had, the type of charger it was plugged into, and when I wanted it to be ready and automatically began charging at the proper time to be ready in the morning.

The car itself was very well-built. The last time I’d considered a GM car was in 1997 when I’d ended up with my first Toyota, and the interiors were not what you’d call competitive at the time (I was looking at the Cutlass’ last gasp at that point, by the way). The Volt’s interior was much nicer – I wasn’t exactly a big fan of the white Apple-style center stack, but in general the controls were well laid out and the materials were relatively nice. Quality outside was good as well – this car had the extra cost paint that involved a base coat, a tinted clear coat, and a regular clear coat that produced a particularly intense red. (Of course, touch-ups were a pain as matching the color required three steps instead of two. The price of progress, I guess.) Overall, the Volt did what GM wanted it to do – it brought me (a Toyota/Lexus buyer) into the showroom and sent me out with a GM car.

My enjoyment of the car was, as one might guess from the title of this post, cut somewhat short by an unfortunate event. About 18 months and 12,000 miles into my ownership period (i.e., roughly halfway through the lease), I was taking my usual route from my office down a fairly heavily traveled side street to reach the highway and my wife’s office. It had been raining somewhat so the roads were wet. I was in a line of cars as I approached a curve in the road that went off to the left for me. As I came close to the curve, a Nissan Murano SUV came around the curve in the opposite direction at a speed that I can only guess was well over the 35-mph posted limit – the rear of the SUV started to spin, the driver panicked, and overcorrected (probably to avoid going off the road to her right into the woods and a steep drop-off). The front wheels caught traction catapulting the Nissan perpendicular to my direction of travel across my path.

In what can be characterized as providence or just good luck, she collided with the drivers side of the Volt directly over the B-pillar between the front and rear doors. She was still moving fast enough to shove my car straight sideways into a 6-inch tall curb, breaking the rear control arm on the passenger side and leaving the rear passenger wheel in the street. Side airbags and seat airbags went off, tire smoke swept over the scene, and the very nice OnStar lady was talking to me almost as soon as the car came to a stop.

Once I dislodged myself from the car by crawling over the console to stand in the rain to survey the scene, I got a good look at the mess. The driver of the Nissan was a high-school teenager who’d left the front license plate of her car pinched between the two doors on the driver side of my car, the wheel was still in the street, and her car was roughly 50 feet behind my car (as I’d kept moving after she hit me) and was blocking the whole street. Luckily for me, my only complaint was a sore back from the seat airbag punching me in the kidneys. Ironically, I was on my way to pick up my wife and head for the rental car agency at the airport as we were going out of town for the weekend for her high school reunion. That made things a bit easier as I just had to call a colleague to come pick me up and take me to the rental car that was already waiting for me.

Several things made me suspect that the car was probably totaled. The initial inkling was when I opened the hood for the first responders to check for any high voltage wiring damage, and when they found none I couldn’t close the hood as the body structure was bent sufficiently that the hood wouldn’t line up. The second was when I called the tow truck company the next day to let them know that I still had the key in my pocket, and the response was “we won’t need it.”

As suspected (and as you can probably tell from the photos), the insurance company totaled the car once they began taking it apart. They found that the floorpan was folded up much the same way a paper towel tube will kink if you bend it from the ends. Given that the car kept me from the hospital even though I tussled with a large-ish SUV, I wasn’t completely disappointed.

Once the insurance company resolved things with the leasing company (the gap insurance I got with the lease made it very easy as the leasing company accepted the settlement right away), it was off to buy another car. I wanted another electric drive vehicle as I found it to be very fun to drive, but my desire to have something with more electric range may have backfired just a bit, as we’ll see in a couple of weeks.

GM did a very nice job with the Volt (and, presumably, with their other EVs like the Spark and Bolt). All things considered, it seems like one of the best choices for an alternate fuel vehicle. I’d go so far as to say the Volt was a ‘halo’ vehicle that most people could actually obtain and drive day-to-day. It, and other recent vehicles, offer some very stiff competition for the once dominant Prius.

With that said, an EV of any brand is one of those rare instances where leasing seems to be a much more viable option than purchase, with the reason being, EVs depreciate dramatically, more so than any other traditional ICE vehicle.

EVs only seem to depreciate more than IC. Why? Because everyone forgets to factor in the huge tax credits they were bought with. A $30k Leaf only cost the buyer some $20k (in states that also had a credit along with the fed credit). So the basis of the depreciation is $20k, not $30k. Or less, if there were additional incentives. That changes its depreciation very considerably.

I’m amazed how this false assumptions that EVs have much worse depreciation gets repeated by writers and pundits on the internet, my son included.

When you lease an EV, the credit gets sold off to someone that can use it. So the lease is based on the net (after tax credit) price. That’s why the lease rates are low.

The Volt never sold nearly in the number that the Prius has. Or that GM hoped for. In fact, its sales have been rather modest, and are drooping further, and are now well below the Bolt.

There’s a difference between idiocy and ignorance. In this case, the other driver in this case was obviously not ready to drive in wet weather conditions, yet our laws, licensing and her parents gave her the ability to do so. And were I a betting man, I’d wager that her parents levied zero punishment or consequences, because their poor baby was the victim of a rain-slicked road. Quite unlike my father’s reaction to ruining a tire on a curb when I lost control in the rain at the age of 16; my driving was restricted for some time after that, because I lost control due to my inexperience of driving in wet conditions.

If anything, one could argue that all of us are the “idiots,” for making it too easy for the very young to legally drive in this country at any time, and under any conditions. However, I doubt we’ll ever see a move toward more stringent driver training and stepped licensing, at least not in my lifetime. Besides, aren’t the self-driving cars going to solve all of these problems? (Said ironically.)

Putting aside the virtues or other wise of the Volt – for mine, a car drawn by the kids in school art classes who actually believed the encouragement line that their work was good – modern cars are astounding. Even if we assume that at point of impact it was no more than the 35mph limit, to walk from a smallish car that was hit that hard in the side and complain of no more than minor airbag pains nearly defies belief. If the car had been only about 10 years younger in design, hospital, and 10 before, mortuary.

It did well in the crash, having had a Murano it takes a good amount of stupidity (or youthful exhuberance) to be able to get the back to come out…

The Volt is a fascinating car, your insights are very interesting. If Chevy had put this drivetrain in something that looked like the Equinox I think they would have sold much better. Still, I think it is an important stopgap in the world of electrics and definitely has (had?) a place in the market. Great color too!

An untimely end for your car but very fortunate for you. It’s amazing how car safety has improved and I’m glad you were unscathed.

A coworker owns an identical Volt. His commute is not quite 50 miles round trip, but he does make a side trip to drop off and get his wife daily from her job. He has joked the gas engine kicks in at nearly the exact same spot every day on his way home. He told me if you think of fuel usage over total distance driven by both modes, the fuel economy is astronomical.

Sorry to hear about your volt, but glad you made it out ok. I’ve said this before here, and will admit it is probably an unfair characterization, but Maryland drivers of Nissan SUV(s), both the Murano, and especially the Rogue, Drive like “Murons”. My commute is on 95 between Baltimore and Washington, and I repeatedly see these vehicles being driven like crotch rocket style motor cycles. And I can’t figure out why. They’re CUV(s) & SUV(s), not sports cars. My apologies to those of you Rogue drives who are not ‘Rogue’ drivers….

…as to the Volt, I’ve always liked the looks of these. They look like an attractive normal car, as opposed to some electrics and hybrids that are not very stylish. (Chevy’s own Bolt comes to mind, although it’s got Tesla like range). Like you, I’m an engineer and have done the math. The gas engine is going to kick in on my way home, as my commute is 34 miles one way. As Bob Uecker used to say, “Just a bit outside” [the range tha is].

A guy I grew up with (next door neighbor kid) owns a company that my wife worked for a couple of years ago (small world, love it!) is on his second Volt. He loves these cars. But in his case, it’s perfect. His commute is only 6 miles each way. He can go a few days on a charge, unless he is going on site to visit clients.

No you are 100% correct about Rogue and Murano drivers around Maryland not knowing how to drive properly. But I will expand it a bit to say it seems to be most Nissan drivers in Maryland don’t know how to drive. I have found that in my area (Baltimore/ Washington corridor) the cars most likely to be speeding, driving dangerously and tailgating are Nissan products, Prius and large SUVs.

Ever since Nissan started running their “Everybody is financed including they family dog as long as they have proof of residence” sales event, there has been a big uptick in Nissan products running around here. A lot of them being driven by folks that should not be driving in the first place.

My car insurance went up this premium. It was not anything I did, it was because of all the uninsured drivers on the Maryland roads that wreck causing mine and everybody elses insurance to rise. I am pretty sure a lot of these accidents were caused or involved Nissans.

The thing about the Volt that struck me the first time I saw one is the black under the side windows. As shorter windows were all the rage, Chevy came up with this idea that made
the windows look taller which gave the car a dated look before it was ever released. To my eye it’s the worst DLO ever.

The reason they did that was because the Volt concept had actual glass in its doors below the belt line, because its top was so chopped. In order to try to make the production Volt look a bit more like the concept, they put on that black paint to simulate the glass. Doesn’t work for me.

The whole episode with Lutz showing such a far-out concept, one that could never be built, was one of his dumber moves. I don’t understand why he did that. When Chevy showed the concept for the 2010 Camaro, it looked much more like the production car. I guess he was desperate to get attention for his Volt baby at a time when the Prius was the hot thing.

The production Volt looks very little like the concept, needless to say.

I have owned my 2012 Crystal Red Volt, looking like the car in the post, but with the more attractive black instrument cluster, for 6 years, bought in early January 2012, replacing my 22 year DD 1992 Lexus LS 400, the best car that I have owned to date (obviously I keep cars for the long haul). The Volt has given me 6 years of Lexus like exemplary service requiring only oil changes every 2 years ( although in actuality I routine oil changes yearly before winter.) The Volt has delivered a computer generated total average 123 MPG over six years of mixed city and long distance driving.

For much of its life I have been able to drive totally on quiet battery powered electric drive, but the flexibility of the Volt’s drive system has allowed me on occasion to drive long distances like a conventional car without battery range worries. The longest long distance trip was a round trip to Charlotte, NC from Cleveland, about 540 miles one way through the mountains of West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina.

For optimized long distance driving with significant elevation changes, one selects the Mountain Mode drive choice which leaves the equivalent of a 14 mile battery range buffer to assist the internal combustion engine for climbing steep grades. Clever! There were no long distance driving issues with my Volt through the delightful, agreeable Appalachian mountains.

Some say that it is possible for the Volt to do 100 miles per hour on battery power alone, and I can’t dispute that claim, said with smiles.

Additionally it is capable of keeping up with the 80-85 MPH winter time speedy traffic on Michigan’s snow covered I75 to and from Detroit’s Auto Show. I mount Blizzak snow tires each year on the Volt for added safety, comfort, and peace of mind for the typical snow and ice driving conditions here in the Great Lakes Region.

The rust proofing of the body has been superb with no apparent rust issues after 6 years after suffering through our winter time salt rich roads.

The only interesting issue that has happened to the Volt here in Northern Ohio has been a secondary issue related to the regenerative braking of the Volt. Pad wear has been minimal for the past 6 years due to the greatly enjoyed regenerative braking of the Volt. But because the pads aren’t really being used, and because of the heavily salted roads, the salt corrosion of the brake rotors, especially the rear rotors, has been great. In the upcoming, soon to arrive springtime, I plan on replacing all four brake rotors due to the corrosion/rust issues. This is an irony due to the pleasant, strong regenerative braking, resulting in the pads being barely used, and because the rotors get little wear they become the ultimate, replaceable consumable, at least here in road salt rich regions.

The Volt has been an absolutely reliable car for my 6 years of ownership. My battery range hasn’t degraded yet and I still get about 25 miles range during winter (limited by the wintertime effects on Battery chemistry and the use of car cabin electrical Resistance Heating) and typically I get 35-40 miles battery range during the summer driving normally in city and highway traffic with A/C. I love my Volt and the reliable experience that it has given me.

This has been the first GM car in our family since the disastrous, engine expiring 1986 fwd V8 claptrap Cadillac DeVille that my parents bought. It took my curiosity about electric vehicles to take the leap of faith to buy the Volt. Maybe this first generation Volt was over-engineered without the cost savings typical of GM for decades, whatever, I’m enjoying my ownership experience. Am I just lucky, or have the prior issues of GM ownership been exorcised, who knows? So far it has been a good 6 years experience, and I plan of keeping this car for a while long, for likely long term ownership as I have done in the past.

In my experience although galvanized bodies no longer rust, the road salt does in all kinds of other bits. My sister’s Subaru did a lot of commuting on the Mass Pike in winter and everything under the hood was rusty, and the tail gate got stuck. Driving at 70 on salted roads means you are driving in a salty mist. My minivan deposited its spare tire somewhere when the plate at the end of the cable holding it apparently rusted through. The bases of the rear coil springs were rusting through, a terminal condition.

Not sure what can be done about under hood and elsewhere rusting caused by driving in salty mist, but it maybe under body spraying is a good idea for those of us in the snow and salt areas.

The cost to everyone of salting roads is probably a lot more than the benefits.

“The cost to everyone of salting roads is probably a lot more than the benefits.”

There is a benefit in treating roads in winter weather. Those that are out driving are less likely to have wrecks that cause injuries or worse. Most people enjoy getting home to see their family after work.

Treating roads allows emergency services to get to that person elsewhere having the stroke, heart attack, or profuse bleeding. Let’s also not forget treating roads allows those that weren’t paying attention to the weather to get to the hospital quicker and easier for treatment as the ambulance is more likely to get there.

Traffic will still flow regardless, so keeping roads treated eliminates the traffic jam that will be created by those wrecking on untreated roads, so the secondary problems like additional wrecks and stranded motorists running out of fuel don’t happen.

But I don’t know a thing in the world about any of this, so maybe I’m wrong.

Yes, I would agree with you and not just because I know what you do for money… LOL!

When I was a kid growing up here in the midwest, we would hear these apocryphal stories about how when it snowed in Atlanta (or anywhere where they get snow rarely) about how bad the traffic was or how they shut down the whole city because of snow.

It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized we up here would have the same issue if we didn’t have dedicated methods and equipment for dealing with the snow. The snow was always dealt with (maybe not as quickly as we’d like) and we went on our merry way bitching about the white crust of salt everywhere.

I say this now even as my once pristine minivan is rusting away in my driveway due to the exposure to the salt and other chemicals. I will say this much, my late-build Pontiac G6 has full fender liners on all four wheels. I really believe this has prevented the car (and conscientious winter car washes, too) from suffering from the rust that wipes out many cars.

What really needs to happen is for more car makers to build more rust resistance into their cars. Granted, many cars have already. My van is 14 years old and lived in Southern Indiana for the first part of it’s life. Three years of exposure to Western Michigan’s climate has ravaged the vehicle and some of the trouble is due to GM’s crappy white paint.

But, I can imagine that with our winters, little or no treatment of the roads would be considered a good idea. IMO, it would be criminally negligent. It sucks to have to replace a vehicle because of rust, but I think I’d rather do that than take my life into my own hands every time it snows.

geozinger

Posted February 18, 2018 at 7:59 AM

I can’t edit my post, so here goes: “But, I can’t imagine that with our winters, little or no treatment of the roads would be considered a good idea.

I think rust resistance goes in cycles. I remember the early 80s was good time in many American cars, Chryslers in particular. But when a cost cutting cycle begins rust resistance can go away. 90s-00s GM cars seemed to suffer this way.

FWIW even southern Indiana gets enough snow and ice that roads are treated, but it comes up less frequently. So the process on your van was likely underway already, just accelerated once you got it to Michigan.

I live in Maryland. Maryland is the rock salt capital of the USA. Even when there is just a hint of snow in the forecast there will be tons of rock salt on the roads.

What I do is I wait for a few days after the snow disappears or it rains and washes the rock salt out of the roads. I then take my vehicle to the local car wash( it has both a self serve and a full serve automatic wash). I pay $10 to go through the full serve car wash and have the heavy duty undercarriage spray do its thing. I will then take it over to the self serve part of the car wash and pay $5 to spray around the cracks and other places and let it dry and that is that.

$15 to $30 a month for the months of December to April and I have a car without road salt rust.

Very glad your Volt experience was so good, and very glad you walked away!

Winter electric range is a bit less due to the heater as you said, but also because the air is a little denser, so it takes more work to push aside. And battery chemistry is a bit less efficient at lower temperatures.

Your Volt’s battery may have lived on in someone’s electric conversion. Salvaged Volt battery packs are available on Ebay, at much better prices than new packs.

Glad you were able to walk away from that accident! These are handsome cars and I would happily own one, although I think I’d prefer the “Viridian Joule” colour they used in promotional material.

When they were released here in Australia, they promptly flopped. Why? Well, we just have less of an appetite here for hybrids and electric vehicles. We don’t have the tax credits US buyers have and we don’t have the wide range of models (Fusion Hybrid, Optima Hybrid etc). The Holden Volt also was barely promoted… I did a double-take when I saw one the other day, it was probably the third one I’ve ever seen down here. And I’m pretty sure it was a fleet vehicle, from memory.

Speaking of fleets and hybrids, if you see a Prius or Camry Hybrid here, it’s probably a cab. Private buyers just don’t seem to care for hybrids. Now, as for pure electric vehicles, I can confirm the Tesla Model S seems to be taking off here and I see them all the time. Good!

We do get one hybrid here that y’all don’t have: the Lexus IS300h. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on that, considering what’s been on your driveway. The argument for it not being offered in the US is that it would poach ES300h sales, which I think is ludicrous.

Holden sold a grand total of 247 Volts here. The Camry and now Corolla hybrids are I think an example of them making sense. For a relatively small amount more you are buying a more pleasant vehicle to drive than the base 4-cyl models and of course the fuel consumption benefits.

As for the Lexus, I dare say the IS hybrid would add too few additional sales to justify the cost of compliance approval.

Thanks for the post, too bad the Volt met an untimely fate. This is a car I’ve been interested in since it’s release. I’m too cheap to lease one but now that they’re showing up in the used market in decent quantities, this is on the short list to replace the Pontiac.

I’ve spoken to both new and used owners of Volts, they all seem to like the car. They like the fact that they do not have to worry about range anxiety and like your experience, the car is exceptionally well built. I like to think of it as Lutz’s revenge…

Sorry to see that it had a premature end to road use, but like others mentioned, I imagine the battery pack has gone on to another life somewhere else.

Nice story about the Volt. Sorry to hear the car met an unfortunate end.

I don’t have any experience in driving a plug-in electric car, but I get the impression that driving an plug-in electric car has more of a driver involvement experience because one is constantly conscious of the limited range and it becomes somewhat of a game or challenge to maximize the range on battery power. Probably also makes one a better driver in terms of driving efficiently.

When driving in rush hour freeway stop-and-go-traffic, is the battery drain higher compared to constant speed driving? When the battery level gets to a certain level during that stop-and-go traffic, does the gas engine automatically kicks in?

How does the Volt compare to the Toyota Prius and Honda Insight?

When charging on your 240-volt home charger, how much does it add to your electric bill?

I’ve been driving a pure EV (no gas engine) for a couple of years now. Range has never been an issue, since my car’s 80-mile range is about double my normal commute or day of driving around town. Since I don’t worry about range I enjoy driving it enthusiastically. The torque is great and the center of gravity is very low so it’s fun to scoot around.

As a rough rule of thumb you get about 3 or 4 miles per kilowatt-hour. So depending on what you’re paying for electricity… Say it’s US average 12 cents per kWh, you pay about 3 or 4 cents a mile.

I really like these cars and almost bought on two years ago, However, the seating position was just too low and the seat did not suit my wife at all. Also, I really did not shop or get a firm installation price but it seemed like getting set up for Level 2 (240 Volt) charging was going to cost about $2000.

So, we passed.

That said I will take a look at the new version which I think is great when we need another car.

Too bad they quoted you so much for the home EVSE. Home Depot has them for around $500. If you have 200 amp service then it’s a pretty simple job for an electrician to add a breaker and wire it up, just an hour or two tops. We had a spare 240V breaker from when we switched our stove from electric to gas, so the electrician just had to wire it in.

I assume that everyone is aware that the current Volt is the second generation. The batteries were moved so the back seat is not divided and can seat three in a pinch. I’m guessing that there are all kinds of other improvements.

Thanks for the write up and input from other commenters. I always wondered how well the system worked as far as range and performance.

I remember reading about the volt when they first came out and my first impression was that they stole my idea. In the mid 70s my aunt used to bring home the ends of roll paper from some type of office machine. There were green stripes near the end of roll to indicate a paper change was needed. For eight to ten plus year old me these green stripes became roads and on these roads and spaces in between all sorts of scenarios played out and all sorts of ideas for strange cars were drawn. I knew about amphibious cars and I drew double decker three masted pirate ship busses doing battle. Submarine cars, James Bond got one but I don’t know for sure if they appeared in my scrolls first. Also Luke Skywalker had his hover car. I know they were in my scrolls first.

I know for a fact that I drew my idea for a battery powered electric car that had a gasoline powered generator to charge the batteries when they start to get low. I remember my older, much smarter, though that claim was always in dispute, brother telling me what a stupid idea that was and how it would never work. Not in a million years. It was so stupid that he threatened to rip it up and burn it. Then many years later Chevrolet actually built them. They STOLE my idea!

This makes what happened with my Aerostar seem like nothing. Yes, there was substantial damage to the front end as plain as daylight from the 2 deer hits (bumper, grille, and right headlight & park light), but the van kept on going even with the transmission going on its last legs (or more correctly, gears). The last time the van was started (we jump-started a lawnmower battery with it) there was shuttering even at idle in all gear positions except Neutral. Also, the Check Engine light sometimes went on & off intermittently, the Oil Pressure gauge went down to nearly nothing, and the Battery Voltage gauge acted funny, too (going to 8 volts or something instead of the usual 12). Even if all that got fixed at a negotiable price, there would be no guarantee that something else couldn’t go seriously wrong next. In short, it would’ve become an endless money pit until it fell completely apart. I did look at a 1997 Aerostar at You’re Approved Auto Sales (formerly Twin City Motors) in Batesburg with 136k miles for $1800, but after looking over it thoroughly, 3 major things were wrong with it that weren’t quite so apparent in the dealership pictures: 1) the front end had been wrecked before just like mine, except maybe so bad that the headlights wouldn’t even screw back into the fenders like they should have (I think some of the screws were MISSING, too), 2) the interior smelled of cigarettes (a scent that will NEVER come out), & 3) the top of the gearshift knob was missing, possibly making shifting in & out of Overdrive very difficult if not impossible (believe me, you NEED that feature when descending a hill with a full cargo load behind you and traffic in front of you). Then there was a ’94 with 69k miles in Fort Mill for $5000 that had a handicap wheelchair lift mechanism & judging from the badges above the front wheels also the ever-elusive E-4WD system. I had 2 thoughts about it: 1) I wouldn’t need the wheelchair lift but someone else MIGHT (I wouldn’t want to deprive them of that opportunity) & 2) if something broke in the E-4WD transfer case there would be virtually NO chance of getting the parts for it. It’s already tough enough getting parts for the regular Aerostars (Ford no longer makes the air filters for them). The Astro I mentioned in a previous post was actually in decent condition, but 1) the rear bumper had been damaged before and didn’t line up straight with the rest of the van (one more good hit would likely total it) & 2) access to anything in engine compartment would be no better than the Aerostar. Getting the Transit Connect would’ve required me to take off work & drive nearly 3 hours away to pick it up and another 3 to get back home (I NEED my work money). In the end, I went with the Ranger & am now confident that it was my best choice given all the above circumstances. Several other things also worked in its favor: 1) Insurance quotes revealed the Ranger would be cheaper to own than the Transit Connect & I could sell it back for a lot more if I no longer wanted it (the demand for these trucks is STILL high), 2) It had one feature I had always dreamed to find already installed on the Aerostar or Astro (a Class III hitch receiver & the trailer wiring to boot), 3) Getting parts for the Ranger is SUPER easy (the overall body style dates back to 1993), & 4) I only had to drive 20 miles at most to pick it up.